EU Council endorses patent bill

The EU Council has approved a controversial proposal on software patents, despite opposition from numerous software developers and some European countries.

The European Council adopted the software patent directive on Monday, despite requests from Denmark, Poland and Portugal to reject the directive.

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Protesters march
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An EU Council representative said Monday morning that the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive had been adopted but was unable to give more details.

As it now stands, the directive would legalize software patents. Supporters say the directive would protect research and development investments by European companies. Opponents say it would stifle innovation.

According to Florian Mueller, an antipatent campaigner who watched the public part of the meeting, a minister from Luxembourg said the directive is being adopted to ensure that the council adheres to its processes and thus avoid creating problems for other directives.

"We are adopting the position for institutional reasons, so as not to create a precedent which might have a consequence of creating future delays in other processes," the minister said, according to Mueller.

Last week, it was reported that Denmark would attempt to have the directive listed as a B-item, rather than an A-item, allowing the text to be renegotiated.

The Luxembourg minister acknowledged that Denmark, Poland and Portugal would have preferred the directive to be listed as a B-item, according to Mueller. The directive now moves to the European Parliament, which can reject or amend the proposal, for a second reading.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) accused the EU Council of ignoring the views of both the national parliaments that spoke out against the directive and the European Parliament, which demanded that the directive be restarted.

"This is a very sad day for democracy and casts a very dark shadow over the European Constitution, which will give the council even more power," the FFII said in a statement.

Hugo Lueders, the director of public policy at pro-patent organization CompTIA, said he is pleased that the council has adopted the directive. He said software patents are needed to ensure that the European Union can stick to the goals set by the Lisbon Agenda--that the EU will become the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010.

"We think this directive is overdue," said Lueders. "It's extremely urgent to proceed with the Lisbon Agenda, of which this directive is a key element."

Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[heystoopid]

Nuts to software patents!

Computer Software Patents are a dead end, the argument for these patents are basically a closed loop used to enhance the software companies coffers at the expense of all users(governments are user's as too) and manufacturers of cpu's(how can on patent a basic set of microde instruction sets as used on all basic cpu's as manufacted by the various chip companies like AMD, INTEL etc). All that computer software does ultimately is to logically act as interface between the user and computer chip(ie converts all code to execute the program into a machine readable program steps). The Peter Principle disciples, are truly working overtime to promote this dead end idea! In the famous word of one General comes to mind is NUTS!

[Russell McOrmond]

CompTIA dishonest

CompTIA is clearly being dishonest. Legalizing software patents in Europe will stifle the EU from becoming "the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010". What CompTIA is worried about is an EU economy able to achieve that goal by not being burdened by the tax on the economy that poor quality information process patents cause.

Whether good quality software patents help or harm innovation is up for legitimate debate, but there is no room for debate about the fact that the majority of software patents are of poor quality (would not stand up in court) and stifle innovation. Studies indicate that between 60% and 95% of software patents granted by the USPTO are of poor quality.